Wodie and I in the strawberry bed, Searching for strawberries juicy and red; Breathing the airs of a morning in spring, Listening the notes that the meadow larks sing; Heart beats and pulse beats keeping in tune With all that is lovely in beautiful June. Sharp little twitters near by us we heard; Where was the haunt of the dear little bird? Soon the wee nest and its nestlings we found, Safe in a catnip bush, close to the ground; Home of the sparrow, whose chirruping brood Kept their four yellow mouths open for food; By their fond mother unceasingly fed With morsels of strawberry, fragrant and red. "O, Mamma," said Wodie, "did ever you see So tiny a nest in so tiny a tree? And isn't it perfectly lovely to stay In the spicy catnip leaves all day? And whenever you wish for something to eat, To dine on a slice of strawberry sweet? To hear the father-bird singing, a tune In the old peach tree all the afternoon, And to be shut out from the dew at night By the touch of mother-wings, soft and light? I think when these dear little birdies stray From their home in the catnip bush away, Wherever their dear little forms may go, In the summer's sun or the winter's snow, They will say, as the old folks always do, That their baby days were the best they knew." +----------------------------------------------------------------- + | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. | | | | Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant | | form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. | | | | Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. | | | | Italicized words are surrounded by underline characters, | | _like this_. | | | | The Contents table was added by the transcriber. | +------------------------------------------------------------------+ End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and Nature, Vol. VIII, No. 1, June 1990, by Various